Things were peaceful, until they aren't.
The situation between Israel and Palestinian's Hamas has been tumultuous for many years. While conflicts and tensions have been ongoing, there have been periods of relative calm in the past, even though the overall relationship remains intricate.
During some of those rather peaceful moments, at one time in Israel, a music festival was held in a rural farmland near the Gaza-Israel border in Israel, at the western Negev desert, near the Re'im kibbutz.
However, nobody there at the festival called the Tribe of Nova music festival, expected that Hamas militants would come and opened fire at the attendees, killing at least 250 people and took dozens as hostages.
In the attack believed to be the worst civilian massacre in Israeli history, one of the casualties is Shani Nicole Louk.
She allegedly died, and had her naked body paraded.
The music festival was called the Re'im music festival, or the Supernova Sukkot Gathering.
Produced by an organizer called Nova, it was touted as the Israeli edition of Universo Paralello, which is a psy trance festival that originated in Brazil. The rave was billed as a celebration of "friends, love and infinite freedom".
The popular event that attracted people from all over the world, was known for its diverse lineup of electronic music artists and its festive atmosphere.
With a camping zone, and an area with a bar and food, the festival that garnered mostly Israeli between the age of 20 and 40 had a large gathering, partly because its schedule coincided with the Jewish festival of Simchat Torah.
Thousands of people attended the event.
It was indeed a festive, but a party that didn't last that long
Shortly after the Palestinian Hamas militants began their attack on the land of Israel on October 7, 2023, by firing thousands of rockets and launched attacks on land, sea, and air, they also launched a dedicated attack to the festival.
The surprise attack against Israel, caught the concertgoers by surprise.
Electricity was cut off, and dozens of Hamas militants stormed the front with firearms. They riddled people with bullets, and fired their guns at all directions.
The massacre that happened around 6:30 a.m., around sunrise, left attendees in panic.
Due to the open door nature of the event, the terrain didn't have lots of hiding spots. Pretty much everyone there were within range.
And Shani Louk was there.
In a video Shani posted on social media, she is seen partying and dancing, facing the camera with her friends, while music blasts in the background.
Then, it's alleged that afterwards, the 22-year-old tattoo artist and the German-Israeli dual citizen social media influencer found herself in the crossfire of the unexpected attack.
She caught one of the bullets in the chaos, and collapsed.
But what made her death disheartening is that, a video of her half-naked body being paraded was shared to the web.
In the video, her dead body was placed on a flat-bed pickup truck, where one of the gunmen draped his leg over her waist, while the other grabbed her hair. It appears that her limbs were already dislocated.
The woman was subjected to ridicule and scorn during this macabre procession, as the rest of the crowd chanted, and spat on her body.
They displayed the body of Shani, transported as a war trophy, in a display of barbarism.
The attack on the festival was a senseless act of violence that took the lives of innocent people.
As the world became aware of the Hamas’s attack on Israel, Shani Louk's family back in Germany desperately attempted to contact her.
When the family managed to reach her, Shani's mother said that her daughter was "panicked a little bit" and added that she was going to get to her car to drive to a safe location.
But that was the last Ricarda Louk heard from her daughter.
Later, she tried contacting her again, to make sure that her daughter reached the designated location, but failed even after numerous times trying.
"We stopped talking, and since then I didn't hear anything from her anymore and then she wasn't responding on her phone," Ricarda said.
She said that after seeing videos of festival-goers running for their lives without shelter while being shot at by Hamas, she learned that the militants were blocking the vehicles and shooting so people couldn't reach their cars and escape.
"That's when they took her," Ricarda said.
At first, the family believed that Shani was only a hostage.
Holding a picture Shani on her mobile phone, her mother Ricarda said that her daughter had been “kidnapped with a group of tourists in southern Israel by Palestinian Hamas”.
"It's the last we have seen [of her]," the mother said.
"We are always looking for more videos, more news, something that shows her in some other places, and we cannot really see anything yet. We saw that somebody tried to use her credit card in the Gaza Strip multiple times. That's all we have. No other clue."
A few hours later, Ricarda saw her daughter in a disturbing video online.
When the family saw the video, they quickly identified Shani from her distinctive tattoos and dreadlocks.
Shani's mother and cousin leaves no doubt about her identity.
"We got a video from a friend through social media, and we identified our daughter on a pickup truck in the back lying on the floor with militant men around her and pushing her down and armed, and they were driving into the Gaza Strip with her, and so we saw they were in the Gaza Strip already," she said.
"I ask you to send us any help or news. Thank you very much."
"We haven’t received any official information yet. We hold out hope for positive news, but there is no doubt that the woman in the video is our beloved Shani. She had been attending the Peace Music Festival. This is an unimaginable nightmare for our family."
They confirmed the devastating loss suffered by their loved ones.
"The video is, as you know, it looks very bad, but I still have hope. I hope that they don't take bodies for negotiations," the mother said. "I hope that she is still alive somewhere. We don't have anything else to hope for so we try to believe."
Shani, who often referred to herself as "Shan," was a social media influencer who engaged in various lifestyle and fashion activities.
For example, she was an expert in the creation of dreadlocks, and also an artist dedicated to tattoo design.
She was had drawing as a hobby, which was heavily influenced by old-school and the Middle East.
Moreover, she liked to travel very much, and that her most recent destinations were the Czech Republic and Greece, among others.
Shani's aunt, Orly Louk, described her niece as a world traveler, who grew up in Israel, but with relatives in Germany.
She also said that her niece refused to take up compulsory military service in Israel by using her German passport. She was "a convinced pacifist," she said, and a conscientious objector to military service.
Before she died, the 2001-born Shani was living together with her boyfriend.
After the video went viral, it was found that one of the perpetrators was Mahmoud Abourjila. His was identified through photographs stored on his Google phone account, which depicted him wearing the same clothing as seen in the infamous video of the incident.